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[katara]

Title: The Mabon Feast

Series: Wheel of the Year #1

Author: C.M. Nascosta

Genre: Grenre: Fiction: Adult, Genre: Fiction: Fantasy, Genre: Fiction: Fantasy: Monsters, Genre: Fiction: Fantasy: Witches, Genre: Fiction: Romance, Genre: Fiction: Romance: Erotica

Status: Finished

Rating: 3.5/5

Sypnosis: In an aging Victorian on a tree-lined street in Oldetowne, the Brackenbridge witches have practiced the craft for generations in a circle unbroken — until the chain was passed to her.

Ousted from her coven, hurting for clients, and struggling to keep her aging family home from falling into disrepair, painfully awkward witch Ladybug is at the end of her rope. When she rents the attic bedroom to an unsmiling, spider-like araneaen, she hopes her fortunes are making a change for the better. But Ladybug knows nothing about the secretive spider-folk; not what they eat, what goddess they worship — or anything about their mating needs. The blustery winds of Autumn usher in the rain and the second harvest . . . and a strangely enticing smell that seems to permeate the seams of Ladybug's very existence. The darkness beyond her bedroom door hungers, and she is helpless to offer herself up as its feast.

The Wheel of the Year is a monster romance series of short vignettes featuring a neurodivergent FMC and a non-human MMC, centered around the witch’s sabbaths. The Mabon Feast is the first vignette in this series and can be enjoyed as a short standalone. CWs in front matter and on author website.

Review: The one thing I have to dislike about stand-alone novels or short story novels is there is never enough background on any of the characters. Oftentimes, this leads to the entire story being confusing, missing something, or the romance really feeling a bit forced.

The characters were enjoyable but their interaction was really not enough for me to buy into the whole "mating" thing. I suppose most of this is due to the lack of information on a monster character and Anzan was one I would have liked to have known what was going on in his head, how his heat was affecting his life and his thoughts of her.

I know first books are merely introductions to the world but I felt there was just so much missing from them. :/

And I loved Ladybug and Anzan together, but I would have liked a bit more interaction between the two of them. That was missing a lot.

I am looking forward to seeing what the next book in this series brings.